


Strike a Match

by waylaidepicurean



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Abortion, Backstory, Canon Compliant, F/F, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Mentions of Gun Violence, and also Penny's, brief mention of - Freeform, i make up a lot of shit about Toni's backstory, i think, implied past sexual assault, my unpopular opinions, nothing graphic, some normal violence too, there's a little bit of grandpa Topaz and other serpents but notmuch, there's some casual naked choni intimacy but no sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-18
Updated: 2020-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:55:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23198179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waylaidepicurean/pseuds/waylaidepicurean
Summary: Toni Topaz was kidnapped by Penny Peabody. Then she was rescued. The in-between and aftermath.
Relationships: Cheryl Blossom/Toni Topaz
Comments: 9
Kudos: 60





	Strike a Match

**Author's Note:**

> I like Penny Peabody. I have a lot of sudden free time. I decided to work on a fic I started in January as a vehicle for my obsession with minor female characters who are terrible. And also my unpopular opinions about the serpents kind of sucking a lot.
> 
> Does two lines of song lyric and a title make this a songfic? I hope not because if I have to admit to myself that I wrote 12k words of songfic I'll probably die.

Her grandpa's trailer is one of the oldest in the entire park - the wheels long rusted off and the foundation settling into the earth like it popped out of it and grew there. Three generations of her family have lived here. Maintained it. Fortified it.

Her grandpa has a shotgun across his lap, and she knows that history brings neither of them comfort as fists pound on the outside, screaming their family name.

The lights are off and Toni is huddling on the other side of the couch pushed to blockade the door, her back pressed against it as her small family sits in silence, praying that the Ghoulies outside will buy the act and think the trailer is a hollow seed.

They howl like wolves; laugh like demons.

"Topaz!" They roar and shriek and cackle, high on drugs and ultra-violence. She clutches her retracted switchblade in her fist and wishes once again that they hadn't sold her grandma's rifle all those years ago. The recoil from the shotgun would probably break her arm if she had to use it (she could get off one good shot, maybe two, but ghoulies don't always balk like they should - like a person would), and there's no way she's going to send her grandfather out there to scare them off with it and give them a chance to do whatever fucked up shit they're planning.

She thinks they must be trying to demoralize them. They could be hunting down the Joneses, or literally anyone else in a position of authority - hell, they could easily find them; most of the gang is in the streets taking the fight to the Northside. But this, this is a mission. It's sowing fear, for sure, the feral hooting and idle destruction in ever widening circles around the Topaz trailer as they search, keeping everyone still in camp bunkered down or beating a quick retreat.

Her grandfather is looking at her, implacable. He wants to leave, wants to let the Ghoulies take him so they'll leave everyone else alone, but she told him. She told him, that's not how it'll work. They'll hurt him, kill him, to send a message, to break their spirits, and then they'll raze this place to the ground anyway because they think they're owed it, now. She thinks of Archie, and tries not to curse his name.

They sit in silence, and she presses herself against the couch harder - to keep them out and to keep him in.

"Tommy! We're getting bored out here! Don't make me burn you out!"

"Fuck," she mutters. Her grandpa makes to get up - his forearms tightening, his knuckles white around the shotgun as he presses his weight down onto his knees to leverage himself up

Toni gets up first. She races to the window, flicking the shade to the side just enough to peek with one eye.

"Go fuck yourself, Ghoulie! I see a flame, I'll blow your fucking head off!" It's a bluff. She hopes it's a good one.

Malachai steps around the corner, into Toni's field of view, and fuck if that isn't terrifying. He's got a molotov loose in one hand, lit, waving it carelessly as if a spill won't take his hand and his whole ugly jacket up in a split second. "There you are, you little bitch. I had to come all the way across town to get your ass and you've been here the whole damn time." The spiked bat in his other hand flips up, until he's holding it by the middle of the weight, and he slams the handle hard into the eye of the guy next to him with a look of fury, sending him reeling. "You had one job, and she ain't even hiding," he spits, righting the bat with another deft toss and swinging it languidly. The rage is gone from his face, just like that, and Toni can feel cold sweat in the small of her back. "I'll make you a deal, little bitch. You come out, I don't throw this and burn this motherfucker down."

All of a sudden, like he swung the bat at _her_ face, Toni realizes. They weren't calling for _Tommy_ Topaz. They've been screaming _Toni_ Topaz. She turns to her grandpa and he looks back at her, the same realization in his eyes, and his impassive gaze turns to the window next to the door as he hefts his shotgun to bring it to bear. "Let him try," he says.

"Make me wait, and we start lobbing mollies at every trailer in this shithole," he promises at her silence.

She knows he will. She suspects he'll do that no matter what she does.

She doesn't have any other option but to appeal to a sense of fair play she knows they don't have.

Her grandfather grabs her arm, his meaty fist digging into the flesh hard enough to bruise, pulling her away from the window so roughly she almost loses her grip on her knife. He doesn't have to say anything, because she knows what he's thinking just like he knows what she's thinking. They're blood, through and through.

She tucks her blade into her waistband so she can use the free hand to grab her grandpa's wrist gently. "Just let me talk to him, Grandpa," she tries to bargain with him. His tight face is a firm no, but she does it anyway. "If I come out, you'll take all your War Boys and leave Southside Trailer Park alone," she shouts at the window, and the elder Topaz looks at her with a quiet rage of his own, pulling her to his chest, wrapping his hand around her mouth to shut her up. She lets him, with a generous definition of "let". He's old, but he's still strong, and if she has to, she can break loose - she knows which hip is the bad one - but she doesn't want to hurt him.

"Boy scout's honor," Malachai drawls with his face pressed to the window Toni had been at, trying to find a crack in the drapes to see through. She looks down at him from her high angle, weighing her options.

She can't call the cops - even on a good day they come a day late and belligerent to any calls on the Southside. She could call Jughead again, but he's running interference on the Northside. Sweetpea isn't picking up.

(For a moment she thinks about calling Cheryl, but she can't. She tells herself it's to keep her safe, but she thinks it might just be cowardice - she doesn't want to say goodbye.)

They will burn down the trailer if they have to - that's not a question. She can get out through a window, maybe, and maybe she can even run away. Her grandfather can't. They won't let him go, if he can escape the blaze.

Maybe she banks on them needing her alive, maybe they can't burn her out. But then they burn down every other trailer, filled with scared kids and scared moms and all the sick and already wounded who can't escape.

Maybe she goes out. They do what they came for, and they leave like they promised, honor amongst thieves.

All the options are really fucking bad. She really wants to cry.

So she does. Her grandfather buckles at the sound of her first muffled sob, loosening his grip to hug her close, and she sinks into it for a long moment. Then she bolts, jerking from his body and down the hallway towards the bedroom faster than he can react, locking the door behind her as he yells without words and stumbles after her. By the time she's pushed the window up in its frame he's at the door, smashing his body against it, calling her name. She's slithered out the window long before he can do anything to stop her, and Malachai is there almost before she hits the ground, catching her up at the waist with an amused laugh. "You've been an absolute pain in my ass this evening, but needs must when the devil drives."

"You promised," she reminds him, with as much steel in her voice as she can manage while being manhandled with iron nails ripping at her tights and scraping at her legs. He laughs, easily, amused again, and hands off the molotov in his hand for his underling to yank the cloth from and tamp it out underfoot.

Dropping his bat, he reaches with both hands and hefts her over his shoulder, and the pressure on her middle and the fear in her gut makes her very aware that she's been curled into a cramped corner for ages and that she hasn't peed since lunch. The guy Malachai smashed in the face leans down and retrieves the bat, handing it to him with an almost sneer, and Malachai takes it without acknowledging him at all. "I did, little bitch. We'll leave for now. But this isn't a truce, it's a temporary cease fire."

It's better than she hoped for, at least.

He carts her over to a hot rod, throwing her through the open back door and into someone's lap. Her head reels a bit with the rough handling, but she recoils instantly at the feel of a hand carding playfully through her hair. Her back hits another body with a jolt, who shoves her back just as hard as the Ghoulie makes space to squeeze into the backseat next to her and the other Ghoulie already waiting, and she's thrown chest first into the smirking blonde who stares at her hungrily as she smacks her gum.

"Be nice to the little bitch," Malachai says as his lanky form clambers into the driver's seat. "She's a gift, and I don't want you fucking up the wrapping."

The girl Ghoulie grins, eyeing Toni up and down, and Toni doesn't know which of these fucks is worse - her, or the one digging a colorful straw out of his sleeve. "Oh, I'm real nice and real, real gentle," the blonde says with a giggle, walking her fingers playfully from her lap to Toni's. She doesn't know if the interest is sincere or if she's being fucked with, but either way she slaps the blonde's hand, hard.

The other Ghoulie explodes, slamming his palms against the headrest in front of him rapidly, spastically, powder in his beard, and his compatriots laugh at his actions and Toni's terrified reaction.

 _Fucking Ghoulies, man_ , is all she can think under the onslaught of their horrible music, the vigorous dancing of the loaded guy on her right and the unsubtle attentions of the licentious woman on her left.

They pull out with the smell of acrid smoke and the grinding sound of loose gravel thrown in their wake. From her place trapped between her captors she can catch glimpses of tableaus through the windows; groups of Serpents and Ghoulies fighting each other, and clutches of drunk, roaming Northsiders with bats and golf clubs and lacrosse sticks throwing down with both gangs indiscriminately because they can't tell the difference. She can't call for help, wedged between the Ghoulies like she is, but she hopes someone notices the obviously Ghoulie hot rod and does something to stop it before it gets to where it's going.

Nobody does.

Malachai jumps out of the car like a kid at Christmas - clear excitement on his face - as he drags the girl Ghoulie out so he can get at Toni again. She recoils, kicks out with her foot, and does nothing but deal a glancing blow to his chest and knock her body into the high Ghoulie to her other side. He peevishly pushes her back towards Malachai's laughing form, patting his jacket to make sure his stash is safe. Toni wriggles away from the hands grabbing for her as Malachai laughs raucously, amused by her struggles, and when the Ghoulie riding shotgun hands back a loose mass of rope she feels her heart go rabbit fast. She nails Malachai twice more in the chest, her booted strikes hitting more firmly now that she's bracing herself against the other Ghoulie - and by extension the opposite car door - until Malachai finally taps out. "You wanna help, you fucking idiot?"

The Ghoulie she's leaning against is slow to react and she takes advantage, scrambling away from the open door and over his lap clumsily. She tries to draw her legs up behind her but Malachai grabs one with both hands and a second pair grabs the other. "What the fuck do you think you're going to do, little bitch? You going to try to run?" Malachai is laughing again, like he's just told the funniest joke he's ever heard. "You think I won't turn you into roadkill? Fucking try me."

 _Fucking dare me_. Toni doesn't stop struggling, thrashing her legs and hooking her fingers into the door handle.

"Little bitch, even if you did get away, you think you can run back to your grand daddy before I get there?" Malachai doesn't even veil the threat; the rhetorical question more of a promise.

Toni goes limp, and the Ghoulie she's laying across shoves her into the foot well. "Fuck you," she says, but it's weak and muffled and ridiculous as she speaks into the passenger seat's undercarriage to avoid pressing her face into the steeltoed boot under her head.

Malachai smirks, pleased by the defeat in her voice. With a careless whip, he throws the rope into the rolling Ghoulies face. The Ghoulie's reflexes are molasses slow through the haze of drugs and he looks at Malachai dumbly. "Tie her up, you fucking deadhead!"

He does. Badly, but with her position and his fine motor skills in the trash it's painful all the same. She thinks of the time a cop doing a raid at the school recognized her from a failed chase weeks before and the way he handcuffed her so awkwardly her shoulders felt like one big bruise for a month afterwards. Malachai lifts her over his shoulder again as she rotates her wrists into a more comfortable position and she wishes, not for the first time, that she'd been gifted with proportions that didn't make her incredibly portable.

"Charmer!" Malachai hollars, feet spread, stance wide, chest out as he throws her onto a grimy couch. He looks like a caveman, proud of himself for bringing home a hock of meat, and Toni feels a visceral disgust.

A figure in dark leather comes out of the cabin nearby, stooped and slow as it pushes past the broken door.

_Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck._

Penny uncurls and stands tall, hands pressing to each side of her spine as she stretches and her vertebrae pop. "You finally get her?" She asks, bored and annoyed and sounding supremely done.

It's not the response Malachai wants but he maintains his charming facade, throwing his hands in Toni's direction with a flourish like a magician revealing his bisected and wiggling assistant to the crowd.

"Good job, it only took you for-fucking-ever," Penny grumbles. Malachai takes it in stride, ambling around the couch to join up with Penny as they look down at Toni from a vantage she can't see. She tests her bindings subtly, the too thick ropes almost dwarfing her wrists.

A hand presses into the back of the couch near her head and she can feel it sink as her body settles with it. Malachai doesn't sound put off at all by Penny's attitude as he explains himself. "She wasn't at the riot, we had to hunt her down at the heart."

There's a gruff sound, like Penny's almost impressed they managed to get into the trailer park. Toni doesn't know why, since just about everyone who could fight went after the Northside, ready to release long bottled rage.

A moment later, she feels the couch behind her sink even more as Penny leans on it, arms crossed as she finally acknowledges Toni, herself. "I'm disappointed, Ponygirl. Thought you'd be in the thick of it after your friend got offed."

Toni keeps her mouth shut, even as her teeth grind and her eyes blur. She hadn't expected Ghoulies - she just wanted to keep her home safe if a few drunk high schoolers came to start shit while everyone was distracted. Penny snorts, derisive. "Did any of your junkie fucks pat her down?" Malachai hesitates, and Penny takes that for the admission of failure that it is. "Jesus Christ, are you guys trying to get me tit shived?"

He blusters, a crack in the veneer, as Penny climbs over the couch and hauls Toni up by the ropes binding her hands with more strength than her age and frame would suggest. It makes her shoulders ache as the older woman yanks her hands above her head, free hand running over her jacket and into the pockets. She pulls out her wallet and tosses it into a lawn chair nearby, a handful of hair ties from the other pocket following. Malachai takes over at a snap of Penny's fingers, holding her still while the woman digs her fingers under the leather and up her side. Toni squirms and kicks her in the calf. "Settle down, little bitch," Malachai says, jerking her arms so hard her whole body is lifted off the ground for a second and her shoulders scream.

"Kick me again and I'll break your fucking knees," Penny growls. "I'm not trying to fucking molest you, you little fucking idiot."

Toni shies away from her encroaching touch, cringing. "Weirdly enough, some bitch who looks like she crawled out from under an 80s hair band groping me makes me really uncomfortable and I don't trust you."

Penny smiles with teeth like knives. "I told you, I'm not a kiddy diddler. But I will beat you like your daddy if you keep it up." Her hands continue their path, up Toni's ribs, behind her shoulders and back, then lightly over her bra. It's incredibly unsettling and she can't help her reactions, but Penny doesn't call her out and she doesn't linger. She's perfunctory, like it's a thing she does every day - no more unusual than pouring a cup of coffee in the morning or folding laundry. Her fingers pause on the left, eyes narrowing. She shifts her body and shoves her hand brusquely down Toni's shirt.

"Fuck you!" It's instinct, it's calculated, it's adrenaline. She always thought if it happened again - Toni brings her head down as hard as she can, her forehead cracking square against Penny's face, and the woman reels back.

"Sonovabitch!" Penny groans, eyes watering as her hands hold her face protectively. Malachai stifles a laugh behind Toni and Penny wheels on him, a knife in her hand before either person in front of her can react. "This is your fault, you fucking punk! What kind of idiot doesn't do a basic patdown when they're kidnapping someone? Fucking amateurs!"

Malachai schools the mirth from his voice before he says anything else, although Toni can feel the laughter in his chest where she's been pulled back against him. "Look, you want me to get Gutter to do it?"

Penny turns, and they both see the Ghoulie blonde from the backseat grinning at Toni with dark interest.

"Is that what you want, you fucking idiot kid? 'Cause she looks like she'd be pretty damn thorough," Penny asks, her voice slightly nasal from the one hand still covering her nose. It's rhetorical, they both know that she absolutely _does not_ want fucking _Gutter_ anywhere near her, but the analytical part of Toni's brain wants to know why Penny is asking at all. "You pull any more shit and your friend over there is going to be your babysitter, and frankly she _does_ look like a kiddy diddler." Penny doesn't wait for a sign of assent, just jams her hand into the top of Toni's bra again, pulling out her phone and throwing it into the surrounding trees, hard. Toni hears it crack against something several yards away.

Malachai whistles. "You sure you don't wanna keep that? Maybe call Jughead from her phone to-"

Penny snarls, waving her knife at him in a way that looks like punctuation and feels like a threat. "I know what the fuck I'm doing. You do your part and I'll handle mine."

The hands on her are rough and they make her skin crawl and she presses her legs together hard when Penny makes her way up from her boots to her skirt. "For fuck's sake, you little dumbass, act like you've been through intake before," she growls, punching her none too gently in the hip. Penny goes up the right thigh and around to her ass and hip and then across her belly to the other side. The press of fingertips against something on her right side, at the crease where her leg meets her crotch, makes them both pause. "What the fuck is that?" Penny asks, irritated.

Toni doesn't really know until she shifts her leg, feeling the warm object press against the top of her thigh. "I think it's my switch," she admits. No point in lying about it. She'd forgotten about it after the metal heated up to body temperature anyway. The thought makes her feel stupid, the voice in her head calling her every name in the book for being so fucking idiotic as to forget having a wholeass weapon while she was crammed in the backseat. She could have tried to take out the two in the back and rolled out of the car while it moved - something, anything at all!

But could have, should have, would haves don't help her now, and she locks that anger away for another time. Penny purses her lip, glaring at Toni. "I swear to god. I'm going to grab the knife, and if you hit me again I'm going to pigstick you with it."

Toni turns her head away, shrinking into herself as she feels her skirt and tights pull away from her waist. Her underwear doesn't move, and it's a cold comfort as she feels the lightest brush of a stranger's knuckles on her stomach and their fingertips on the bare skin of her thigh before it's gone. Penny tucks the blade into her jacket pocket and zips it closed, nodding to Malachai. "Let her go."

He does, literally, dropping her to the couch and leaving her to right herself with her elbows in the musty, almost flat cushions. Penny rubs her palms roughly against the denim of her jeans, radiating tension, as she tracks Malachai's movements back to his cluster of Ghoulies and their wheels. "Keep eyes on the Joneses. Both of 'em. I wanna know where they are and who they're with at all times," she says, and Malachai waves his hand over his shoulder at her without turning around.

"Don't worry, we got this."

Penny sneers, her face pinching as she mockingly mumbles under her breath with her back to the gang members sliding off their hot car hoods and into leather interiors. With a chorus of deafening revs and a spray of loose dirt they ride out in a squad, whooping as they go. Toni can't say she's sad to see them go, but she's not exactly happy to be alone with a Snake Charmer either. Especially one that really, really doesn't like her very much.

The other woman ignores her for the most part, though, and that's a comfort. She putters around, feeding the fire, pulling out a bottle of beer from a nearby cooler, settling herself slowly into a rickety lawn chair across from the couch. She takes a few long pulls from the bottle and then rests it on her thigh, finally turning to look at Toni directly.

"Don't go making any plans, dumbass. You try to run, I'll do laps around you. I was in track, back when Southside had a track team, and I didn't fall off."

Toni almost wants to roll her eyes. "Impressive."

"Shut up," Penny says, unaffected, taking another long drink.

They're quiet after that, sitting in their own corners. Ten minutes in she starts to feel supremely uncomfortable, as if she's been waiting for the bell to start the match and she's beginning to think she missed it. Penny just keeps looking at her. Not like Gutter did, but like she's searching for something that should be there but isn't.

"Anyone ever tell you you look like your daddy?" Penny asks, running the bottom rim of the bottle along the grain of her denim. _Nobody has_ , Toni thinks. Her grandpa sent her off to live with cousins when she was a few months old - she's not sure she and her father ever existed in the same place. _What a stupid question_. "'Cause they fucking lied to you," the older woman chuckles, bringing the beer to her lips again. The blonde looks at her, appraisingly, a tiny smile hidden in the curve of her upper lip. "You're the fucking spitting image of your mom."

That makes her breath catch. She's seen a picture of her mom, but she's never met her. There isn't a single picture of her mom for her to compare, except for the one in her grandpa's trailer, buried in a box of loose photos. And she's in utero in that one, so. Not terribly useful.

Nobody ever talks about her. Not grandpa - who never talks about anything, really - not her uncle - not to her face, anyway, although she's overheard enough to know he wasn't a fan - and not any of the aunts and cousins she stayed with until she was 14 and decided to move back to the place that she thought felt most like home at the time.

Her brain calls bullshit on Penny, but her heart prickles with rusty hope. "Fuck you," she spits, and her chest aches.

"Fuck _you_ ," the woman retorts, amused. "It's a compliment, you little shit. Your mom was cool. You, on the other hand, suck ass."

Toni scoffs, slamming her bound wrists against her knees. "Bold judgement from a woman who had me kidnapped and felt me up."

Penny's face draws tight, although she keeps a smile that no longer feels genuine on her face. "First of all, I didn't feel you up, stupid shit. Second of all, you fucking tortured me, you self righteous little cunt. You're lucky I haven't found _your_ serpent and carved that shit off." Toni watches her physically rein in her anger, taking deep breaths and smoothing her palms over her own thighs. "Your mom would be so fucking disappointed in you," she slips in, tipping her drink to down the last of it and throwing the bottle into the firepit. It bursts and Toni thinks she felt a cut on her leg but she's not sure if it's just her imagination, if it was just debris bumping into her or her mind playing tricks.

"Shut the fuck up. You don't know my mom," Toni bites out, grabbing her right hand in her left and squeezing tight as the rope chafes her wrists.

Penny laughs, and it's mean. "I know her way fucking better than you do, I guarantee that. From what I remember she was dead before you even came into this world. I had a whole ass life with her more than you ever will," she says, sharp and venomous; a cobra unloading its payload into your throat.

Toni grits her teeth, standing up in a rush to swing her boot through the blaze between them and sending a cascade of embers and burning twig at the woman across from her. Penny swears, swiping at herself where the ash and flame attempts to settle, and Toni bolts for the treeline.

She's running as fast as she can. Her mind tells her not to trip, _don't you dare fucking trip_ , because Penny will make good on her threats and _if you don't break your wrists falling on them she'll break your knees_. She can't hear the other woman behind her until she does, and then it's just the sound of brush breaking and heavy breathing and then a hand, reaching out to snatch at her jacket, pulling it half off and stopping her momentum so abruptly she falls flat on her ass. Penny kicks her, just once - but harder than Toni thinks she's been hit in quite a long time - in her upper thigh. She groans, twisting her hands to protect the spot, and Penny swears and hauls her up by the rope, half dragging her behind her as Toni struggles to get her feet back under her.

"I feel like I haven't impressed upon you the seriousness of your situation," Penny says, her breaths short and tight, her words clipped. She jerks Toni's hands and she collapses to the forest floor, forced to let herself be dragged for a moment until she can regain her balance. Toni digs her heels in, trying to break the grip on her, and Penny wheels on her like a viper, punching her in the stomach so hard that her breath leaves her in a rush, her bladder almost fails, and she crumbles to the ground. "I've been being real nice out of respect to your mom, but you have gotten on every last one of my nerves and I am losing my god damn _patience_ with you!" The older woman hauls her up again, dragging her back to the fire at a clip Toni can't quite keep up with, her steps faltering. "You ever read _Misery_? Stephen King. Crazy chick kidnaps a writer and to punish him for trying to escape she cuts off his fucking foot. I liked that book," Penny says, huffing as she basically drags them both bodily through the underbrush. "Pretty sure it was all a metaphor for heroin, but still."

Toni doesn't know how to respond; isn't sure she even has the oxygen in her body to form words to do so. Penny heaves her back over the couch so hard that Toni almost falls off and rolls into the fire, only righting herself enough to fall onto her side on the cushions. "You fucking move again and I'm taking your achilles tendons and turning them into shoelaces."

She doesn't move. She goes still and quiet as a mouse in the field as Penny fumes, kicking smoldering wood back into the fire and righting her lawn chair. The woman almost throws herself back into it, glaring at Toni like she would love nothing more than to kick her into the fire too.

"You're making me feel real dumb, kid, and I am not a dumb person. If you were anyone else, I'd have tied your ass up in the cabin and let those fucking junkies keep an eye on you. And they don't like Serpents very much," the older woman says with a voice like ice. "I wasn't pulling your fucking leg. I owe your mom a lot and that's the only reason your ass isn't grass right now, but that debt is finite." Penny sneers at her, and Toni feels ashamed of the fear in her belly. She forces herself upright, so that at least if this crazy asshole kills her it'll be on her feet and not against this disgusting, abandoned furniture. "What did I just fucking say?"

Toni hardens herself. "I'm not going anywhere, I'm just sitting up. This couch smells like ass."

Penny looks at her, like she's at war with herself. "You are such a fucking disappointment," she finally spits, her hands resting on her knees and her right hand curled in such a way that Toni can almost imagine the cigarette in between her fingers. "I can't believe Toni could have a kid so fucking stupid."

" _I'm_ Toni," she says, and it's so weak and stupid but.

The other woman looks down her nose at her. "You fucking wish you were. You're a Junior, at best, and you don't even deserve that much of her legacy."

Toni sinks her teeth into the tip of her tongue, like she can hold it still and keep the fighting words in her throat from spilling out. She feels at war with her own self - her heart telling her to fight back, to make the other woman hurt like it hurts, and her brain telling her to shut the fuck up before she gets _actually_ hurt.

Penny features twist into a look of disgust at whatever she sees in Toni's face, ripping her gaze away from her with a jerk and digging into her own back pocket to retrieve her cellphone. It makes Toni feel like her very presence is suddenly nauseating - like a spit in the face.

 _Fucking_ _ **good**_ , she thinks. She hopes Penny lives the rest of her life miserable and suffering and disappointed.

The older woman is thumbing a message into her phone with both hands, slow and plodding. They don't speak for long minutes. Toni hopes they never speak again.

Penny cuts her eyes at her from time to time but Toni ignores her, pressing her fists hard into her own lap and rocking gently. Her bladder twinges and she distracts herself by thinking about how satisfying it would be to push the blonde into the fire between them, like a modern Gretel and The Witch showdown.

"What are you, fucking five? Stop wiggling," Penny snaps, slamming the arm of her chair.

Her first instinct is to tell the woman to go fuck herself, again. To say it over and over until she forgets how to say anything else at all. But her brain tells her not to be stupid and she bites it back, curling her legs closer to herself and tucking her feet heel to toe.

Penny looks at her with suspicion that turns into dawning disgust. "Are you kidding me? Did no one housebreak you? God, I fucking hate kids."

There's a certain skill to surviving in the middle of a gang warzone when you're five feet tall. She doesn't hide from conflict, but she's had to learn how to pick her fights, how to diffuse tension, how to come off big enough to be a threat before a fight starts but not enough to be a target during one. It's a razor's edge between not being a liability and not getting herself killed, and the only way she's been able to navigate it is by being very, very smart about her choices. Her self preservation instinct is finely honed.

As she opens her mouth, she wonders where it's gone.

"You're the reason you're alone!" The sound that comes from her throat is damn near a scream, her anger and fear and sadness bubbling up in her throat like vomit, like bile. "You use and manipulate the people around you and they saw you for what you are and they hate you for it! The Serpents didn't persecute you, you showed your true colors and they cut you out and you earned every one of those votes all by yourself. And we were right." She spits her words like daggers, trying to pierce flesh and draw blood. "You're working for the fucking Ghoulies. No real Serpent would… _debase_ themselves like that."

Penny's face has gone still and impassive at her outburst. Her eyes are bright in the firelight. Toni holds her breath.

And then it's like… Penny unfurls. Her chest puffs as she sucks in deep and exhales slow. Her hands unclench and run lightly over her own thighs. When she stands her body is loose and slightly slumped, and Toni fights her own self to keep from shrinking in response. She stalks over and Toni doesn't let herself look away, refuses to cower. A warm hand with blunt, jagged nails grasps her chin and pulls up, up, until Toni has to scramble to her feet. The straight line of the side of Penny's hand presses firmly against Toni's throat as she pinches her jaw between her fingers and thumb, and it makes Toni very, very aware of her trachea and exactly what purpose it serves. "So, you remembered your big girl words, finally."

The older woman grabs her by her upper arm and frog marches her to the cabin. Toni looks around wildly as she's pulled inside, her eyes alighting on everything but unable to focus on anything: the fireplace filled with ash, the duffle bag beside a couch draped in a thin blanket, the mostly empty plastic grocery bags strewn about the open floor plan's implied kitchen space. The vacant space for a hunting rifle on the wall above the mantle and the knife in the table.

The dark room in the corner with a door slightly ajar that Penny is dragging her to.

Penny jerks her around to force her into the room first, and Toni only has a few seconds for her eyes to adjust before the older woman slaps her hand on the wall and suddenly there's a burst of blinding light from humming fluorescent lights.

She blinks painfully for a moment before she realizes she's in a bathroom. There's a pair of 5-gallon water jugs in the dingy bathtub and a clean bucket in the sink.

"Hurry up and do your business," Penny says in the sort of brisk tone you'd use on a dog at 3am. Her body is in the doorway, angled with her back pressed to one side of the frame and her eyes trained firmly on the other. It leaves Toni feeling lost, confused, her hands still tied in front of her and her mind running several seconds behind. The room feels oppressively cold and she almost longs for the broken couch and popping fire outside.

Penny cuts her eyes at her, quickly, and then away, and then back when she sees Toni hasn't moved at all. "I'm not going to hold your dick for you so you better figure that shit out and hurry up," she snaps, crossing her arms over her chest and flexing until the old leather creaks.

"I… I can't go when you're right there," Toni says. The feeling of vulnerability makes her angry, but she's also extremely aware of how much taller the other woman is, how much stronger, and how this room has no windows and only one door.

"Tough shit."

There's a deep down twinge and she has to accept her circumstances. The alternative is worse, probably. Her position on that waivers as she manages to slide her tights and underwear down her thighs with her bound hands and she half thinks pissing herself by the fire might have been better when her bare ass meets the freezing toilet seat. Even though she's pretty sure Penny can't see most of her, the important things anyway, around the boxy sink, she presses her hands over her lap firmly. And prays. Her bladder aches but her body is too tense, too shy to do what needs to be done.

It's just painful, deafening silence.

"I told your mom to go pre-law with me. She went PoliSci."

Toni's breath catches and she swallows hard around the lump in her throat. She won't ask.

Penny shuffles, leaning harder on the wall as she kicks her feet out into a causal cross in front of her, until she stretches the whole width of the door. "She was gonna come back to this shithole and be mayor. I told her she shoulda aimed higher than that. She was too smart for this fucking town."

The other woman's voice fills the room and drowns out all the other sounds, or at least it feels that way. Toni can't help but feel rapt under the spell of second-hand memory.

"She joined all these nerd ass political clubs. Bunch of sororities tried to get her to pledge but she wouldn't 'cause I wouldn't. She knew I'd kill anyone else they tried to room me with. She almost lost her job at the library because she cut the tires of her debate rival and nearly got caught. I alibi'd her, told the cops we were marathoning this stupid vampire show she loved in our dorm room. The RA covered for us, 'cause we were fucking." Penny stops, suddenly, and cuts her eyes at Toni again. She looks away and her face is sharp and considering.

It's almost torture. Like she had no idea she was starving until someone gifted her a morsel and now it can't come fast enough - this slow drip feeding of information only making her hungrier.

With a quiet grunt Penny pushes off the wall. "You done, Junior?"

Toni finds she mostly is. She cleans herself - an incredibly awkward affair with the oversized ropes holding her hands together - and stands to try to pull her clothes back up. It's much harder to do than pushing them down, and she struggles for several minutes to even get them past her knees.

Penny prowls with a tightness of movement that Toni feels in her bones as she shrinks from the older woman reflexively. Rough, sun-tanned hands push hers away and hook into her clothing, straightening her tights and then pulling everything up her hips and around her waist in the same perfunctory way they patted her down earlier. Those hands tug her skirt back into place and then jerk away as soon as their job is done, disappearing into the pockets of Penny's jacket as her biceps flex with her discomfort again.

"Wash your hands," is all she says. Toni can't bring herself to say anything at all. The older woman takes the bucket from the sink, already partially filled with tepid water, and waits for Toni to put her hands over the basin. Then there's a splash, a brusque rub with a fairly new bar of soap, and another splash once Toni has scrubbed her hands together to the other woman's satisfaction.

The blonde even dries her hands with a clean-ish teal towel hanging nearby. Toni wonders what it's like to hate someone and still do things like this for them. She wonders if Penny was a good person once; if that's what her mother saw in her. The child in her thinks that Penny couldn't have always been a monster (hopes she wasn't, with all her trembling heart, because what kind of person could be friends with such a monster?). Her damp, aching wrists remind her that matters very little.

Penny leads her back outside, through what Toni realizes now is the older woman's temporary home.

They return to their places and the cooler beside the lawn chair sloshes with half melted ice as the blonde yanks out another beer. Toni hates the way she looks at her. There's something soft in it, now.

"You look just like her," Penny says with a sigh.

Toni's heart aches and she forces the tears back. "Fuck you." She feels stupid and tiny and childish for how badly she wants to cry. The adrenaline is gone and she's bone weary and it takes all of the wind out of her, and even if her brain knows that Penny's spinning her up for some reason, it just can't process everything going on. She's scared and overwhelmed and _sad,_ Penny's words burrowing deeper inside her chest than any knife ever could.

The blonde's face hardens again, like she suddenly remembered who she was. Who they are. It's actually comforting, because Toni was starting to forget exactly how much she hated her.

"You know, we went home for Spring Break junior year. Few weeks after we come back, I'm taking her to the clinic. She pussies out, comes back here. Six months later, she's dead. And you're all that's left." Penny's knee jolts, bouncing with her frustration. "You're a fucking traitor. You and your shitty little boyfriends held me down and flayed me. You don't know shit about shit. Not about legacies, and not about the fucking Serpents." She pauses, hands curling to fists as she moves them to the arms of the lawn chair she's turned into a throne. "What was your song?"

Toni bites her tongue, glaring at the worn face across from her. She's sick of being called stupid tonight, and she's not going to give the woman any more ammunition. If she just stops engaging, maybe everything can slow down enough for her to feel like she's got a grip on it.

"Don't play fucking dumb, shithead. Every Serpette remembers their song. What song did you have them play when you got on stage?"

Her eyes cut down and to the left, no longer able to hold Penny's gaze. She doesn't have to see her face to know she's smirking, cruel and sharp. "Mine was _Sunny Came Home_. I thought I was making a statement, at the time. Like the dumb fucking kid I was. I was fifteen and I grew boobs basically overnight, so my mom loaned me a pushup bra and some silkies that were too big for my bony ass. I wanted to burn that whole bar down. Do you know what your mom's was?"

Toni doesn't ask, even though she has no idea and she desperately wants to know and she desperately _doesn't_ want to know - doesn't want to think of that indignity visited on her mother even if the thought is almost comforting.

(It was a moral compromise, yes, but it was worth it to be a Serpent. Just like her mom.)

She knows Penny will tell her, whatever her reasons are.

"Fucking _Legend of a Cowgirl_. She came on stage with gold hot pants and microbraids and, like, the fuzziest fucking shirt I've seen in my entire life. I know this is all before your time but… she was fucking amazing. She had these gold painted water guns. Filled 'em with red dye and water from the wash bucket behind the bar and I watched her spit in both of them before she went on stage. She shot every motherfucker in that bar." The way Penny laughs is entirely confusing. Toni thinks the woman has slipped through time a little bit and is back at the White Wyrm circa thirty-something years ago, seeing a spectacle that Toni can only imagine. "Her mom sat in the front row with a real pistol on the table in front of her. They tried to throw her out but she was a big lady and she hit like a party bus."

Penny's face goes cold and angry again a moment later. "She died a year later. Nobody could say if it was cops or Ghoulies. Nobody could answer why the fuck she would be around either of them. Your mom asked. A lot."

Toni doesn't know what to say or how to feel. She doesn't know anything about her mom's side of the family - she's never heard of this grandmother before, and already she's dead. It feels like a loss even though it shouldn't. How can you miss someone you never even knew about?

"You need to get it through your thick skull, princess. The Serpents don't give a fuck about you. They keep us around to keep the gang from turning into a sausage fest - all dicks and no chicks makes recruitment real hard. You cause too much trouble and they'll cut you lose, and they think you getting mouthy at all is too much trouble. You ask too many questions, and they'll make you stop."

Toni swallows, thickly. "You're full of shit. You're a liar. We take care of our own." She thinks of Hog Eye, who gave her a job when she was way too young to be working, gave her a couch to crash on when she got home to a locked door, used the bat under the bartop to crack more than a few skulls attached to handsy guys. She thinks of her grandpa who rests his heavy hand on the top of her head in his own version of a kiss. She thinks of Sweet Pea and Fangs, who did their best, and Beanpole who grew into an amazon one summer and who every girl on the Southside knows they can call if they need an escort home no matter what. She thinks of the families who take in their neighbor's kids when the red and blue comes through, and the way everyone pitches in to make sure they don't go hungry.

The Serpents are good, at their core.

"Yeah, you got that fucking right. Y'all took care of me real good," Penny bites with her sharp, sharp teeth. "And they took real good care of your mom too. Was it cops or Ghoulies? You ever ask?"

She sees the game Penny's playing now; the seeds she's sowing, the hate she's watering. "I trust them way more than I trust you. You'd sell us for a dime," she says, the disdain dripping from her tongue. She doesn't regret what she did. Penny was - is - dangerous. She's a snake in the grass, and Toni knows she'd hold her down again - she'd do _worse_ if that's what it took.

"Oh, please. Sorry you guys got so fucking precious all of a sudden, but drugs have kept the Serpents afloat for years before you shitheels were a gleam in your daddies' eyes. I don't owe the Southside anything, I paid my debt, but they'll never be able to give me back what they took from me." The way Penny talks, harsh and bitter, gets Toni's back up. "That's the problem with Southside Serpents. You think just because you don't like the deal you don't have to square up. Terms are terms - you don't have to like what I do, but you can't say I wasn't fair about it."

It makes Toni see red, to see this bitch, so willing to poison the Southside with garbage, play the martyr. "Go fuck yourself, you self-righteous asshole. You don't get to act like gang pressing kids into running drugs for you isn't some dirty, morally repugnant shit. You're a drug dealer, no matter how you spin it, and people are dying because of the shit that you're selling."

"Grow up. Ghoulies sold to Northside for years without a peep, but now it's your doorstep and you wanna get mad. If it wasn't me, it'd be someone else - "

"That doesn't absolve you!" Toni snaps. Her hands ache from how hard she clenches them. "Serpents aren't Ghoulies. You aren't a Serpent."

Penny stares at her, eyes in shadow as the flame flickers low between them. "You think it's easy, all black and white. You're gonna see, soon, how much difference there is between Serpents and Ghoulies. Between you, and me." She clicks her tongue like a period at the end of her statement. "Now shut the fuck up, I've got a call to make."

===

The sun rises on a brand new day, and it's like the whole world has changed.

She spends all night at the White Wyrm, patching up Serpents until they can get back on their feet and back into the fight. Sweetpea leads walking wounded in and out of the bar, giving her updates on the field. He tells her that her grandpa is in Greendale, rallying troops and securing lodgings for Serpents who lost their trailers. Cheryl sits like a red sentinel at the windows, ready to loose a hail of arrows at any unfamiliar figures, Birdy at her side with a bottle of rum and a hiccupping confirmation of strange targets.

The riot rolls right into the brawl at the park and drags across the entire Southside for fourteen hours, and in the end the bar is packed from floor to rafters. The liquor ran out six hours ago, the air reeks of sweat and blood, and more than a few friends have turned foe when the chips were down.

Toni drags herself through the mostly slumbering bodies carefully, patting the shoulders of a few Serpents in solidarity as they bus water and what food they could pull together. She finds Cheryl asleep at her post, sitting on a stack of empty crates with her bow upright in her fist and her cheek pressed to the top of it. Birdy, somehow, is still conscious, humming and gently patting Cheryl's knee to the tune.

The minute she crosses some invisible line into Cheryl's personal space her eyes snap open, uncannily alert and searching. When she sees her, Toni watches her whole body go soft and gentle in the space of two heartbeats. "Did we win?" Toni can't bring herself to answer, swallowing painfully around the lump in her throat.

Cheryl gentles even further, coaxing her close with soft caresses of her fine china hand on Toni's dirty cheek. She wraps her under her arm, brushing butterfly kisses against her temple as her mouth moves against the corner of Toni's own. "Come home with me, my little Nightingale. Not even Florence herself would begrudge you a warm bath and a night's sleep. We'll raid the Thistlehouse stores and bring back water and what dry goods we can find."

The loudest voice inside Toni says she shouldn't. What right does she have to a luxurious bed and a scented bath when so many are hurt so much worse than she is? The rational part says denying herself doesn't help anyone at all. But the quiet part, her aching heart, is only human. Cheryl guides her and she follows, out the door and into the quiet, empty streets of what's left of the Southside. Cheryl's car is out front, covered in a tarp and entirely undamaged. More than a few broken arrows litter the ground around it. It's early evening, and Toni feels like the sun is mocking her, specifically, with its warmth and brightness.

Cheryl ushers her into the car carefully, closing the door behind her. Cops, with lights flashing, pass them on the way back to the Northside, but nobody stops Cheryl Blossom. The feelings that evokes give her emotional whiplash - it's good that they don't get stopped, but fuck if it isn't incredibly unfair - and she sighs and closes her eyes.

"Can I borrow your phone, babe? Penny broke mine and I haven't been able to check up on anyone." She whispers, hesitant to break the silence.

Cheryl hands it over easily. "Of course, TT." She holds her right hand up and Toni grasps it carefully, pressing her index finger to the screen to unlock it. Cheryl settles the hand on her thigh when she's done, and Toni relaxes into the familiar touch. She calls her grandpa at his trailer, who doesn't answer, and Sweetpea, who does. They're both at a farm outside of Greendale, a safehouse, he says. Most of the people still at the trailer park had to bail out fast. She doesn't call Jughead. She doesn't call FP. She saw him once, at about three am, carting in a handful of guys. He got into a blowout with a few other Serpents in the parking lot and ran off. She hasn't seen him since, but she hopes he's with Jughead.

The Northside itself is almost entirely unscathed, comparatively, as they drive unmolested down the avenues. There are crews in vests cleaning up trash with canvas bags slung over their shoulders and large, clean, bright white dumpsters. Uniforms patrol every other street corner and she sees them stop anyone with a duffle, a bulging trash bag, anyone they see carrying their whole lives on their backs. She wants to jump out of the car and scream at the top of her lungs right into their faces, wants to ask them how they can see human beings at their lowest and make it _worse_. They send them back across the bridge, a modified version of house arrest for a people without houses.

It isn't fair, it isn't right. She presses her forehead to the window glass and feels useless and helpless and unmoored.

She thinks of all the Serpents who snuck out in the middle of the night, only to turn up with Ghoulie warpaint once the fight was over. She knows the bad guys won, but she's not as sure that the losers were ever really the good guys at all.

She wonders if her mother would have turned up with boot black rimming her eyes or if she'd have been there with her jacket on, fighting to the last.

It feels like sleepwalking as she lets Cheryl lead her. Cheryl catches her up as she tries to exit the car, tucking her close and humming gently. The sound of Penelope Blossom's voice echoes like a shout underwater, but she hears Cheryl's loud and clear. "You have no power here, mother."

They make it upstairs and Toni isn't sure she hasn't dreamed everything, she's so tired. When she's settled on a toilet seat she doesn't move, curling into herself and waiting for something. She's not sure what. Eventually there's thick steam and warmth and she feels gentle hands - familiar hands - and sees Cheryl's soft, adoring face. She lets herself be undressed by hands that sweetly linger and she's grateful. For a lot of things, but mostly to be in this moment and nowhere else.

Hands brush lightly over her; Cheryl's eyes water as they slide over a spreading bruise on her hip. It doesn't hurt, and she must say as much because those sorry eyes turn to look at her. She thinks she smiles. She thinks it's real. When Cheryl kneels before her and presses soft lips to her purpling side, she thinks it might be the only real thing.

Cheryl guides her into the shower and scrubs her down gently with a plush washcloth, tender and chaste even as their wet skin slides and rests together. Red nails scratch at her scalp as they wash and condition and brush through her hair, and then they patiently plait it into a pair of protective pigtails to frame her face.

The bathroom is still warm when she's transferred into the claw footed tub, the water hot and steaming with essential oils. Cheryl lets her rest inside alone, drying herself and tugging on a robe before leaning against the side of the tub, arms folded and head resting on top, eyes sleepy.

Toni watches her girlfriend watch her. There's no expectation, no need for explanation. Cheryl wants no more than she will give, in this moment. She just wishes she had something for her. She doesn't know what to say. She's been hurt worse. Scared more. It just feels like a fault has been formed inside her, but how do you explain that to another person? She doesn't want to admit that the truly lasting damage Penny has done is to something so fundamental to her that she's not sure she's the same person anymore.

She loves the Serpents, but she's not so sure she believes in them anymore. Not like before; like a child who trusts that their parents love them and will always be there.

_You're all that's left._

"I'm so glad you're safe, my dearest. I'm sorry we weren't there sooner."

Toni rolls her neck on the cool porcelain rim of the tub and rests her heavy eyelids. "I'm doing better than Jug," she says, simply. What right does she have to complain?

Cheryl reaches for her with a careful grasp, cupping her cheek and resting her thumb in the subtle hollow underneath her lower lip. "You can be upset."

She's not sure that she can. Her mind is overloaded on emotions and now all it can manage is sensation. "I think I'm too tired to be," she apologizes needlessly. The thumb swipes her lip and drags at her damp skin. She kisses it clumsily, blindly.

"She said she knew my mom." She doesn't open her eyes, but she can hear the intake of breath beside her. "She said they were friends. I never met my mom."

Cheryl's hand tightens, squeezes just a little, and Toni is thankful her body doesn't react. It doesn't feel like anything but Cheryl. "You've mentioned that. She died… before you were born?"

She told Cheryl that. She tells most people that, if they ask. Most are so used to hearing it about dads, so obsequiously sorry for bringing up a sore spot, that they never question it further.

The lump in her throat feels like a bruise. "Yeah. She was already gone when I was delivered." She herself only knows the broad strokes. Legally dead. GSW to the temple. They didn't think that the baby, that _she_ , would survive the c-section, but she's "a fighter". No arrests, no suspects. No family left to bury her but her baby daddy, and no money to do it with. Interred in an unstained pinewood box, hidden in the rows of a crowded cemetery.

She bought a proper plaque herself with her tips from the bar two years ago. She hasn't been back since.

How can you miss someone you never knew?

Cheryl is chafing to say something, probably blunt to the point of unintentional cruelty, but Toni doesn't need her to say anything. "I know I'm being dumb and she was probably lying to me. I know that. But some of it was real. Not all of it. But some of it was."

"You're not stupid at all, Toni. Not even a little."

She sinks deep into the water, until her mouth and Cheryl's hand are submerged, and then slowly pushes herself back up with her toes against the opposite side of the tub. She almost can't reach. "I think she talked about her because she finally had someone to do it with. I think she missed her." A yawn creeps out of her mouth and she blinks her eyes open once it passes. The sleeve of Cheryl's bathrobe is dangling in the water and soaked, and she pushes her arm away with one hand and tries to squeeze the water out with the other. Her girlfriend looks at her fondly, and there's a shrewdness to it too.

"You listened because you miss her too," she says, just so.

Toni's too tired to shake her head. "No. You can't miss someone you never knew."

"Untrue. I longed for you ages before we ever met." From anyone else it would be a ridiculous sentiment - the outsized theatrics of a character from a stage play. But being extra is so very Cheryl that it hits true and Toni can't do anything but lean up and close the space between them, kissing Cheryl wetly until she's pushed away and back into a recline.

"Rest, TT. I'll go make you something to eat quickly."

"Grilled cheese?"

Cheryl grins at her, pleased by the request. "Anything you like."

Toni purses her lips and blows her a kiss before she thinks of something else. "Will you bring me your phone? I wanna listen to some music."

"Absolutely, TT."

Cheryl doesn't linger after she brings the requested item, stopping just long enough to change her lock screen from her fingerprint to a pin code (4588. ILU T. Her girlfriend is delightfully simple when she wants to be, and Toni finds herself charmed by every silly expression of affection). When Cheryl sweeps away she opens the music app and searches for the song she's been thinking about off and on for hours. She sets it to repeat and shifts to get more comfortable, the water lapping at the sides of the tub as she settles in.

_I'd give my life just to be her_

_I'd give my sight just to see her_

It's a fast paced song, very 90s, and neither sad nor particularly restful. That doesn't stop the tears from running down her face and it doesn't change the fact that Cheryl wakes her up from a dead sleep before she even realizes she's dozed off.

"Broadening our musical horizons, are we?" Cheryl asks, but there's another question behind it that Toni doesn't want to answer. _A liar who viciously beat a friend of ours told me my mom danced on a stage for a bunch of men old enough to be my grandfather to this song_ would be hard to explain to anyone, but especially someone who didn't know anything about Serpent initiations. At least the ones for girls.

Instead she shrugs, dipping down low under the water until her nose just barely clears the surface and all she can smell is roses.

"Come eat, my sweet. I made soup as well."

She expects a slice of american cheese between white bread and a bowl of warmed over tomato juice and frankly she has no idea why because Cheryl can be nothing but 110% herself. What she gets is some kind of buttery cheese that melts into gooey strands between layers of hearty bread delivered fresh from a bakery Toni's never heard of, let alone set foot in, a bowl of tomato soup that makes her nose prickle a little with the smell of chilies, and a cold can of her favorite orange soda from who knows where - all laid out on china dishes with a tapered candle in a crystal holder and a single red rose in a crystal vase on Cheryl's swept clean vanity.

"Cheryl…"

Her girlfriend bounces excitedly on the bed, thrilled beyond the telling of it at her own works. "Try the soup, I made it myself!"

Because of course she did. Of _course_.

Toni spoons a mouthful with silverware that is almost definitely, actually silver.

Cheryl watches her closely, fists pressing into her knees as she leans forward with bated breath. "Be honest," she admonishes before Toni has even had a chance to swallow.

She's glad it's good, honestly, because Cheryl's done so much tonight and more than anything she wants to give her this one, small thing. "It's delicious, baby. Hands down the best tomato soup I've ever had."

Cheryl vibrates with happiness and she can't help but laugh at her. Her girlfriend takes it in stride, reaching to hook her fingers into the belt of the dark robe that Toni is luxuriating in and tugging with a playful grin. "Finish eating, mon amour. I'll get you something to sleep in."

The urge to argue is easily tamped down - talking Cheryl out of doing something she wants to do is an almost impossible task on the best of days and on a day like today, after a night like last night…

Cheryl wants to dote and Toni finds herself wanting to be doted on - has only ever been doted on by this girl - and the guilt is easily drowned out by her girlfriend's humming across the room.

She finds herself wolfing down the meal in front of her, her stomach urging her on as it calculates the hours since she's eaten anything and tabulates it as Too Damn Long. Internally she debates asking for another sandwich but then a yawn ekes out and the only thing she can think of is the bed and Cheryl and both of them in it together.

"More?" Cheryl asks, a change of clothes folded neatly on her lap and her dark nails picking at invisible lint. Toni shakes her head and groans, shuffling the three entire feet between the vanity and the bed like it's an uphill mountain hike before throwing herself onto the mattress.

"Bed," she replies, face pressed into the silk covers. The mattress dips and shifts as Cheryl moves. A knee presses between her knees and Cheryl slips a finger in the wide neck of her robe and Toni sighs as she sweetly kisses the nape of her neck and the curve of her shoulders. She hopes Cheryl doesn't try to go any further because… well, the mind is willing but the flesh is so weak.

Not that she wouldn't try really, really hard.

When she's rolled onto her back and Cheryl is playing with her loosely tied belt, she says nothing. Her body warms to the way Cheryl looks and the way even the impression of her touch feels through turkish cotton. One side of the robe is peeled away, slow and infinitely gentle, until her leg and thigh and the curve of her waist are laid bare. Cheryl's hand reaches for the revealed expanse, withdraws, reaches, and Toni takes her hand and presses it into the hot skin, firmly. The bruise is a bruise - there's pain but it barely registers. "It's nothing, babe." She doesn't say she's been through worse; she doesn't have to. It wouldn't help.

"I should have pinned her to a tree like a butterfly," Cheryl seethes. Toni can't deny that she would have loved to see Penny Peabody turned into a human pincushion as her girlfriend used her for target practice.

"I'm ok," Toni reassures her. She thinks of Jughead, bloodied and broken. She forces herself to stop thinking.

Cheryl sniffles a little. There are no tears, not that Toni can see, but she can hear the shudder in her next breath. "I was very scared."

Her voice is so small.

"We're ok," she repeats, reaching for Cheryl and pulling her flush, kissing her soundly. It's the best her reasoning center can come up with, right now. She soothes herself on sensation, offering Cheryl the same.

Cheryl is the one that stops their kisses from turning into anything more. "You're exhausted," she reminds Toni, as if she needed the reminder.

"You were really hot in your cape," Toni shoots back, running her hand down her girlfriend's back to slip under her top and savor the tactile bliss that is the warm, smooth skin beneath.

Her hands don't stop touching Cheryl as she pulls away. Fingertips drag around her hip as it moves until they just barely press against the flat plane of her belly. Toni slips them into the waist of Cheryl's silk sleep shorts, just far enough to feel anchored.

The long forgotten clothes are in Cheryl's hands now and she extricates a pair of underwear from it. "Let me help you get dressed so you can rest."

"I can get dressed on my own."

Cheryl leans down and kisses her furrowed brow, mollifying. "I want to do it. Let me?"

She nods. The idea makes her feel like a child, or some pampered thing playacting a princess with a lady-in-waiting.

It makes her mind flicker back to Penny.

Others.

 _Act like you've been through intake before_.

It's not the same though. At all. The way Cheryl touches feels nothing like strange hands searching. Her hands are sure and familiar and devoted.

"Thank you." She doesn't know why she says it, but it feels right enough.

Cheryl smiles. "Thank you," her girlfriend echoes. "I love taking care of you, TT. And you deserve it for being so very brave."

Toni twists and crawls on her hands and knees towards her side of the bed, more embarrassed and ashamed now to see the pride in Cheryl's face than she was just moments ago being so intimately dressed by her. "I wasn't."

A hand around her ankle pulls her up short and she waits as Cheryl joins her on the bed, turning down the opposite side so Toni can clamber under and then her own. "You are," she says, just so. "You sacrificed yourself for your grandfather and the Serpents. You got kidnapped. And then you patched up all those people at the White Wyrm. Those are no small things." Arms wrap around her waist, holding her tight, and she can almost believe the sweet things that drip from Cheryl's sweet lips.

"You guys had to rescue me." She doesn't want to admit how scared she was the whole time.

"You're a Serpent, are you not? Part of that is depending on others to help you when you're in need," Cheryl reasons. It's correct, logical. Her brain isn't dealing in logic though. It's a whirlwind of emotions and slices of the last twenty-four hours all in a mad jumble. "I think I want to join."

Her whole body goes rigor mortis stiff. "You want to join the Serpents?"

She hears an affirmative hum behind her. Hands stroke over her, firm and insistent like a deep tissue massage.

The suggestion is an assault on all sides. The idea of Cheryl joining the motley crew that makes up her family? It's enough to make her start sobbing, right now, if it weren't for the thought of Cheryl having to go through the initiation. The image of Cheryl climbing on stage _because of her_ makes her want to vomit the soup she just finished all over the black silk sheets.

She won't let it happen. "We'll talk to FP about it." She'll talk to FP. Her mind already buzzes with half formed arguments in favor of abolishing the serpent dance - well tread ones she's tried before and new ones brought about by circumstance.

"Do you think he'll agree? I know I'm… very much not a Southside native - not native," she corrects herself, clumsy in that well meaning white person way that Toni's used to. "Local, I mean." She huffs a little, frustrated with herself. "He'll agree," she tries again, stronger this time. "He owes me."

"He does," Toni says, easily. She files that away, the ugly reminder of FP's past with the Blossoms. She's not above leveraging his guilt against him.

_You're gonna see, soon, how much difference there is... between you, and me._

It's not the same. It's not the same, it's not the same, it's not the same at all.

"I'm so proud of you. Of what you did tonight. You've earned your rest," Cheryl sighs. "Sleep deep and dreamless, my love." It's the sweetest prayer Toni's ever heard.

**Author's Note:**

> Did anyone ask for this? No. Did anyone tell me to stop? Yes, loudly, obnoxiously, and constantly and somehow always in my ear and it was me. I told me to stop. 
> 
> Clearly it did not work.


End file.
